Do you play Compost?

[Aetherium Slinky]

Compost. It's a card. I wrote a lengthy post on Reddit about it but let's recap here without the math details.

This concerns top 100 EDHrec commanders and a bunch of other silly assumptions:

• You're 93% likely to face a pod where at least one opponent has black in their colour identity.
• In a very unrealistic averaged out game Compost (on average) draws about 4 cards.

Knowing the above: do you think Compost is worth playing even if it's rarely a completely dead card?

[CleanBelwas]

I absolutely think it's worth playing, but you could build a whole deck out of cards I've played in EDH that are worse than compost so I may not be the best judge.

I personally don't play it simply because in my playgroup I'm the only one that really plays black. Each of the other people in my group have exactly one deck with black in (and only as a supporting colour) so it's definitely not worth it for me. Play it against me though and you're likely to draw half your deck.

I'm personally never too concerned with running and amount of "dead" cards anyway if they have high ceilings. Even if the match up is bad and the card isn't going to do much, it's nice to have something that you can discard to faithless looting or pitch to Endurance or whatever. Even dead cards can offer additional utility in other aspects of the game.

For the record, I'm not advocating putting cards into your deck specifically because you won't be sad if you discard them, but if they have a high ceiling like compost does, it's worth the gamble in my opinion.

[Morganator 2.0]

4 card throughout the game isn't great. If it was 4 cards as instant satisfaction would be different.

I think this needs empirical data. We gotta test this out.

I'm thinking you do a test where you have at least one player who starts the game with compost in hand. The other three decks may include black, may not include black. After about 30 games like this you can figure out how many cards on average you draw off of Compost if you get it in the early game.

[stuffnsuch]

I would play Compost if, and only if, I'm expecting to do more than just have an average game, as far as stuff hitting the graveyard.  If I'm milling my opponents or running heavy board wipes, I'd definitely consider it.  I run it in my Enchantress deck because it has a lot of board wipes, and, even as a dead card, I can still get value off it as another enchantment on the board.  I've considered making a Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord deck that's more group mill, in which case that would find it's way in most likely as well.  Other than cases where it can provide above average value, I wouldn't run it, even in a pod that typically is black heavy.  I'd hate for my friends to be discouraged from running a favorite deck just because I'm running a card that puts one color at a disadvantage.